jan 1, 1617 - 1617-1618 Native Americans Decimated by Smallpox

Description:

1617-18
An epidemic now speculated to be smallpox brought accidentally by European explorers kills about 75% of the Native Americans who have occupied eastern Massachusetts for the past 4,000 years, leaving only about 25,000 across the region.

The closest settlement to the Shawmut Peninsula was in present-day Jamaica Plain, and it was decimated.